


The Aftermath of the Contagion

by Christyflare



Category: Jessica Jones (TV), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Mind Control, No Smut, Telepathy, kilgrave is an empath and a siren type mutant, possible interrupted sex scene - non explicit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-06-08 03:39:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6837685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Christyflare/pseuds/Christyflare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sticking my characters in the 'verse of rainer76's "The Trouble with Kilgrave" story, with their blessing. Expanding a good bit on the telepath-killing contagion and what would happen if a healer was hiding a bunch of telepaths and found of Erik was messing up their plans for finding a cure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Contagion

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Trouble with Kilgrave](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5482433) by [thelongcon (rainer76)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awesome author rainer76 has allowed me to use her story “The Trouble with Kilgrave” as a base for my own! I don’t do smut, so none of that in this story, but there might be a scene at some point where Christy finds Kilgrave and Erik in a compromising position, so I rated this ‘Mature’ just in case.
> 
> Yes, Christy’s back. Still working on my other story, but this plot bunny just wouldn’t leave me alone, so I’m doing this as well.
> 
> The most fascinating part of “The Trouble with Kilgrave” for me was the idea of a telepath-killing virus because of how my two main OCs are just so bloody PERFECT for this scenario and how much rough stuff I can write my characters going through due to it.
> 
> For anyone wanting to read the original author’s story, be warned, it is REALLY graphic and at times quite disturbing. Even I ended up skimming some bits just due to the nature of the stuff. That said, reading about Kilgrave being dragged around by his bits WAS somewhat satisfying, considering all the stuff he’s put countless women through.
> 
> Anyways, Paula is finally getting introduced in this story, and since it’s kinda hard to show all the quirks to her powers, but I’ll give it a shot and hopefully not end up just info-dumping on you.
> 
> ‘I’ pronouns means Christy’s perspective. This time, Christy’s powers came much earlier than in “Christy meets Kilgrave”, otherwise this wouldn’t work too well.
> 
> Comments would be MUCH appreciated.

When the contagion hit, it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Elixir had just been killed in a fight with Sabertooth, and Paula had lost her wings in that same fight, rendering her healing ability useless until they grew back in a month.

The Shi’ar were in a war with the Skrull and couldn’t help, the mansion was still recovering from the Hellfire Club incident, and we were swamped with so many injuries that it was a miracle we even identified the contagion for what it was at all.

Actually, it could have been worse.

I could have been among the first infected.

The Prof was the intended target, as we found out much, much later, which explained why he got it first. We’re still not sure when it happened; we just know the results.

He was dead within the week.

The next week, we confirmed that it was airborne.

Things spiralled rapidly after that.

The week before Paula was due to finish regrowing her wings, she got it, to all of our surprise.

She barely counted as a telepath, being only able to utilize the bare minimum of communication ability, and then only when she was phase-flying through something or completely submerged.

But the virus didn’t care and attacked her anyways.

Her unique organ structure and super-enzymes is the only reason she lasted until her wings grew back. They came in two weeks late.

I had contracted it the week before.

I might have avoided it for longer if I had stayed on the other side of the planet where she had begged me to go, but when I heard that she had the disease, I came anyways.

She was in a hermetically sealed quarantine chamber in the hopes that her wings would grow back faster if she wasn’t exposed to any more contagion.

Two weeks in, when I started to cough up blood, she laid into me with everything she had.

She was so mad…

We ended up crying to each other from our sides of the clear wall between us.

I wasn’t even allowed to touch her mind properly, for fear it might make things worse.

By the end of the week, I was bleeding everywhere, curled up in a ball with a bloody hand pressed to the wall between us while she pressed an almost equally bloody hand opposite to me, leaning on the wall for support as she sat.

We had promised to each other that if we died, we would die together.

Best friends forever.

Best friends ‘till the end.

I was determined to hold myself together as best I could with telekinesis until she breathed her last, but even that was getting harder and harder as the seconds passed.

We both collapsed at the same time, and I thought I saw a flash of gold and brown before I passed out.

Turns out that was her wings coming through, causing her to collapse in pain, rather than blood loss.

I woke up to the gentle sound of slowly flapping wings and something sticking out of my arm.

I couldn’t quite focus yet, so I reflexively asked, “How long?”

The sound of flapping stuttered a bit, followed by a gasp, before resuming its rhythm.

“Christy?”

I blinked up at the voice.

“Paula?”

All of a sudden, all of my senses rushed back to me.

Including my telepathy.

The sudden and intense rush of emotions and thoughts from Paula made me startle so badly that it dislodged the blood transfusion tube from my arm.

I swore loudly.

Paula freaked.

“No! You still have ten minutes left before you’re in the clear! Sit still and let me put that tube back in! Now! I did NOT just risk my butt healing you from the brink of death for you to die of a blood clot because you didn’t sit still for the minimum hour for this to work!”

I instinctively complied, apologizing profusely.

Despite both of us desperately wanting to hug each other, we waited ‘till the ten minutes had come and gone – by a good five minutes – before finally disengaging the tube and nearly squeezing the life out of each other, crying uncontrollably.

Once we had calmed down enough, I asked, “What happened?”

Paula sniffled, then explained, “You were just about passed out when my wings finally came in. You collapsed, and I freaked, so I phase-flew straight to cold storage and got my nutrient drinks and blood tubes out as fast as I could so I could maybe save you. A second later, and I don’t think I would have made it. Oh my gosh, I was so scared, Christy!”

She hugged me again, and I sent soothing thoughts into her mind, reassuring her that I was okay and alive and very, very thankful to her.

She just cried harder, but more with relief at feeling my mind in hers again than anything. It meant that I was alive and well. I sensed that she had been terrified of never feeling it again.

She cocooned me in her wings while I rubbed her back, and we cried on each other for a good long while.

Then we both noticed that we were both covered in blood and went off to shower, though I had to remain in telepathic contact with her the entire time so she wouldn’t break down again.

Once we were clean and dressed, we felt much better and went to tell Beast the good news.

Once he cleared us, we went to our bedroom and passed out together, Paula’s wings draped over me, for the first time in a long, long time.

When we woke up, there was work to be done.

Now that we had our healer back, it was time to rescue any remaining telepaths and bring them into the quarantine chamber.

Then, it was time to find out who was responsible for this disaster and make them pay. Hopefully while also getting more specs for the making of the virus so that Hank could finally figure out a cure for the bugger.

And we had to hide.

Nobody could know that telepaths still lived.

Nobody except the remaining mansion residents and as many teleporters as we could recruit.

We would have to be careful.

EXTREMELY careful.

And we had to rebuild Cerebro.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: One year later… Finally getting to the meat of the story. Hope I did the contagion justice here.
> 
> Also, NO, Christy and Paula are NOT in love with each other! They are just really good friends that bonded when Christy first manifested telepathy. There was an incident at that point, and Paula helped her out a lot, and they were joined at the hip ever since, more or less.


	2. The Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the previous chapter was more of a prologue, but for some reason, I always end up getting confused with the chapter numbers when there’s a stated prologue, so to prevent editing mishaps, I’m just labelling the first chapter as a chapter.
> 
> Also, whoops, this got away from me a bit, so the REAL meat of the story will start happening NEXT chapter, definitely. Sorry…

Cerebro took a week to rebuild. With my telekinesis, it would have taken a day, but SOMEONE (Forge) managed to lose the only surviving copy of the blueprints for the thing, and getting enough supplies delivered to the mansion and having them disappear into the basement proved difficult without raising suspicion. 

Thankfully, we were already rebuilding big chunks of the mansion and Forge had some memories of what the blueprints looked like, but it still took nearly a week of transcribing his memories onto paper, getting the supplies, and creating a safe-room in the new sub-sub-basement (thank you, ability to essentially vaporise stuff with telekinesis; the dirt would have been hard to explain) before we were ready to rebuild Cerebro.

A few adjustments and tests later, and we were in business!

Using the Prof’s old notes on mutants he’d already found with Cerebro, we narrowed down the places where he hadn’t looked yet, and I scanned for the rest.

To my great dismay, Emma Frost was one of the survivors so far.

Yes, she had turned over a new leaf from her Hellfire and Schmidt days, but she still wasn’t exactly the most pleasant person to be around. I suspect her diamond form has been keeping her safe so far. Diamond can’t bleed, after all.

Our hunt lasted an entire year. Many times, we didn’t reach a telepath in time, and the virus took them from us forever.

Several times, Paula was too occupied healing some of the ones we’d already rescued, so we didn’t take her along on that particular mission and the telepath died before we could get them to her. My telekinesis can only do so much when their very organs were practically dissolving by the minute.

Speaking of which, my telekinesis got a lot of practice, and I was able to hold smaller and smaller things each month.

By the end of the year, if I was willing to risk a MAJOR headache for hours after, I could hold MOLECULES for thirty seconds!

You’d think that was practically useless, and for the most part it was (though it is pretty cool!).

I thought so as well until I found out how to learn the ‘feel’ of the virus and push any remnants out of the first chamber of the new hermetically sealed safe-room.

‘Course, that was only useful if I wasn’t already sick again, but for food and water deliveries, it helped a good bit.

Poor Paula had been practically constantly healing everybody up until that point, and the sheer amount of nutrient fluids and meats she needed to keep her enzyme levels stable and to keep her blood stores from poisoning her from absorbing other people’s blood… It was getting hard to hide. Not to mention the poor girl barely spent any time awake not flapping her wings to keep the blood and healing fluids flowing.

For anything involving Cerebro and teleporters, my new technique was basically useless, so it really didn’t help the hunt one bit.

Though I could now tell if there was any virus in the air at any given time, so at least I could help Hank determine how widespread the virus was.

It was a moot point by the end of the year.

The thing was EVERYWHERE…

Erik Lensherr, Magneto, had been trying to hunt down anybody responsible for the contagion with no luck.

Considering his attitude to most telepaths, and especially towards Emma Frost, we thought it best not to let him know that we still lived unless he actually stumbled onto a lead.

A year after the contagion hit, we had rescued a grand total of ten telepaths.

We decided to check on Mei Jong, a latent telepath that might manifest properly any day now and get sick.

We missed her by an hour.

Judging from the metal bent around everything, Erik must have been too late as well.

That marked the death of the last telepath outside of my new group.

We all mourned, then started our hunt for those responsible in earnest.

Erik found Stranraer first by sheer dumb luck two and a half months later while he was outside of the mansion and didn’t come back until after, so we didn’t know about it until it blew up.

Clearly, not telling Erik about the telepaths was a mistake.

He had just taken out any leads we could hope to find soon.

Several months later, and we couldn’t find any more leads, but kept a closer eye on Erik.

I sensed him thinking about meeting an old friend, then soon after, the healer he had brought back, Miranda Mercell, left to meet him after a cryptic phone call.

The twits we were, we waited for her to return, despite the fact that Erik had put on his helmet for the first time in a year.

She returned in great distress and unable to speak due to a strange compulsion on her mind.

That was it. Hiding time was over.

As the strongest of the group, I was always the one to go out to check things out, so I was the one who confronted Miranda, released her from her compulsion, and got her to tell me everything.

From her words and her memories thrown at me in panic, I became quickly aware of a BIG problem.

Two big problems.

One: Erik has finally gone off the deep end.

Two: We somehow missed a mutant with a vocal compulsion ability and suppressed empathy power that Erik has gone off the deep end WITH!

Also, Erik was going on a murderous rampage with the siren mutant to help him find his prey.

Said prey were those people we were trying to FIND and interrogate that would be no use to us dead, so we HAD to find Erik and stop him before he killed someone really important!

However, he had his helmet on now, so tracking him with Cerebro wasn’t going to work. The helmet does give off a weird blank spot to telepathy, but trying to find that on a worldwide scale is nigh on impossible.

Our best bet is to try and find the mutant he’s kidnapped and tortured, but since he’s essentially a new empath with abilities that may not be on at all times, it will be hard to find him until his power settles or he has a big power spike that registers with Cerebro.

My best bet now would be to find this Jessica Jones person and get her help. If she found him once, maybe she can find him again.

I put Emma on Cerebro duty while I went out looking for Jessica.

I dearly hope we’re not too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully the next chapter won’t run away with me again and I’ll actually get to Erik and Kilgrave by the end of it…


	3. The Search

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, the previous chapter should give you an idea of where the story is going. Sorry for the idiot balls I had to hand to my characters; it just wouldn’t work for what I have planned otherwise.

It turns out that Miranda got a little lost trying to find her way back to the mansion, so between that and the time it took for me to find the place that she last saw them all, I lost several hours.

By the time I DID find the place, it was abandoned. Recently.

There was metal and blood everywhere.

I grimaced.

I stepped outside and pulled out my phone to call Hank.

He had found out that Jessica was a P.I. but didn’t have a website, so he pointed me to a few former clients of hers that he found commenting about her on the Internet.

Using them, I located her office/apartment, but she wasn’t there.

I found the neighbour thinking about the Hope Schlottman case that we stupidly paid no attention to because no telepaths registered on Cerebro.

We had been so focused on telepaths that we forgot about all the other forms of compulsion that existed out there! Twits.

A bit more mind-diving on my part revealed that Jessica was constantly looking for ways to prove Hope’s innocence, so I visited the prison to see if she was there.

Jessica wasn’t, but Hope was. I made a mental note to visit her at some point, even if at that point she was out of prison.

Scanning her mind from outside the prison revealed that she didn’t know anything either, so I hung around a bit before leaving to go look around some more.

If I had known just how close I was…

I ended up bouncing around the entire city all day before finally camping out of Jessica’s apartment and waiting for her to return.

I was sitting against the wall outside of her apartment with my head leaning back against it and my eyes closed, ‘listening’ to everyone in the building and on the street outside milling about, thinking about random everyday things, when I heard the elevator ding.

I froze and instantly focussed on the person leaving the elevator.

She self-identified as Jessica Jones and had just come from doing certain… activities… with a man she really liked.

I resigned myself to hearing more of this and waited until she came closer.

She saw me a second after leaving the elevator and stopped for another second, wary, before deciding to march right up to me to demand my reason for being here.

When she was ten feet away, I opened my eyes and turned my head to her, still sitting.

She stopped and glared at me.

“Jessica Jones?” I asked mildly.

Fear, panic, and memories of being mind-controlled by the same person Erik kidnapped flew out at me, and I instantly felt really bad for what I had been planning to do. I decided to change things up a bit.

I got to my feet, held out my hand, and said, “Christina Phillips, from Xavier’s School. Miranda told me a bit about you. You’re hard to find.”

She looked at my hand but didn’t take it. She looked back up at me, and I dropped my hand awkwardly.

“What do you want?” she asked suspiciously.

“I was hoping you could help me find where Erik Lensherr’s gotten himself off to. You might know him as Magneto.”

She panicked, thinking, _“Oh sh**, oh sh**, oh sh**! He’s escaped! I knew he’d escape! I TOLD him he couldn’t be held!”_ along with various other expletives, and that was the only warning I got before she threw a punch at me really, really fast.

I immediately reacted by telekinetically shoving her up against the wall and holding her there while taking a step back.

She fought hard against my hold, and it was obvious she had super-strength because I had to increase the strength of my hold to keep her there.

Feeling the increase in strength, she started screaming.

“Let me go! LET ME GO!”

The noise got the neighbour, Malcolm, to come out and look.

I gave him a quick glance, noting his uncertainty about what to do, before I turned back to Jessica and tried calming her down the normal way first, considering her experiences with mind control so far.

“Jessica! JESSICA! I’m not going to hurt you! Please calm down and listen to me!”

“PUT ME DOWN!” she hollered.

“Not until I’m sure you’re not going to try punching me again!”

“I swear, I swear, I won’t!” she pleaded.

“Or running away!” I added.

At that point, I felt something impact on my personal shield, sensed Malcolm behind me with the frying pan that did the hitting, and shoved him up against the other wall with a thought.

Gah, too many distractions from just one person!

Jessica panicked even MORE somehow and started begging, “Please don’t hurt him! Do whatever you want with me, but PLEASE don’t hurt him!”

Exasperated and getting annoyed with the extra panicking person adding to the mental ‘noise’, I threw my hands up in the air and turned to address both of them.

“I don’t want to hurt EITHER of you! Would you PLEASE just calm down and listen to me?!?”

“Whatever he told you to do, it just involved me, not him, so PLEASE leave him alone! He has NOTHING to do with this!”

I sighed and told her, “I’m not being controlled, Jessica. As far as I know, Erik still has him, which is a bit of a problem for us because he’s about to go do something incredibly stupid without knowing it, and I REALLY have to stop him before he kills the wrong person, so would you please calm down now?”

She stopped panicking so much and just stared at me for a while, still scared, while Malcolm hung on his wall, bewildered.

I pinned the frying pan to the ceiling and put him down gently before turning back to Jessica.

“I really just need you to tell me if you know where Erik went and if not, to help me find him again.

“And if I don’t?” she asked, wary.

I smirked.

“I’ll find him eventually; WHEN is the important bit. If you don’t help me find him, I’ll just do it myself, with help from my friends of course. If you don’t tell me if you know anything… I’m still not going to hurt you, but you’re probably still gonna freak if I tell you. Most people do.”

She looked at me warily again and said, “Tell me anyways.”

“I’m a telepath. Figure it out.”

Her eyebrows raised up and she snarked, “They all died. Nice try.”

 _“That’s what we want you to think,”_ I sent into her mind.

She started badly and her eyes widened.

“How…”

“We have a healer. She’s not a very FAST healer, but she’s a healer. There are eleven of us left, twelve if you count the healer, but even SHE doesn’t consider herself a telepath, it’s so pathetic, so we usually just say eleven.”

“But…”

“We’re trying to find a cure before coming out of hiding, but Erik is REALLY jeopardizing that plan right now by going after the only people who might know how it was made in the first place, so I would HIGHLY appreciate your help right about now.”

“Why don’t you just read my mind, then?”

“Because you’re not a bad person, and it feels weird to just barge in without permission then. Also, you were panicking so much, it would have been kinda hard to get anything without putting you to sleep first or something.”

She panicked again.

“You can do that?!?”

“Well, yeah, mind control is a pretty standard strong telepath ability, and I wouldn’t be out here if I wasn’t strong. That said, when you first started panicking, you sent out a bunch of memories about being mind-controlled by this Kilgrave guy, so I really didn’t want to make things worse by controlling you. Also, it’s really creepy, even for me.”

It took a minute of various conflicting emotions passing through her before she decided on a wary calmness.

“I don’t know where he went, and I don’t care, as long as he keeps Kilgrave AWAY from me. Erik made him free Hope Schlottmann, and that’s all I really wanted from him, and finding him means finding Kilgrave again. I don’t think I can do that for you, sorry.”

I froze.

“You mean I missed him by a hair?!? Gah!”

I shook my head and continued.

“Anyways, if I find him too late and he finds out we’re alive, he’s not going to be happy. Especially if we can’t find a cure and have to rely on our healer for the rest of our lives.”

“Why should I care about that?”

“Because you’re a caring person deep down. Also because, fun fact: ALL humans have the potential for telepathy; they just need to train for it. The mutant gene for it just awakens the ability early without the need for training. Point is, if that virus mutates to target the normal gene that causes telepathic potential as well as the mutant gene, the entire human race will die. What mutant-haters don’t understand is that mutants are just enhanced humans. Anything that affects us can potentially affect non-mutants. This virus has already targeted latent telepaths, forcing them to manifest early and die of symptoms. If it mutates again to target humans… it will be pandemonium.”

I heard her think Mei Jong’s name and hid my surprise.

“Why should I believe you?” she asked, but I could sense that she was already thinking of helping out.

“Can you risk not believing me?” I retorted.

“Maybe.”

I just gave her a look.

“You could _make_ me believe you.”

“I could. But you probably wouldn’t say that if I had. Also, ugh!” I shuddered.

“You could be saying that on purpose so I wouldn’t suspect anything.”

“That becomes WAY too complicated, you know. Especially after you said that.”

She thought about it a bit more before deciding to believe me, mostly.

“Fine. I’ll help.”

“Good. Thanks!”

“Now can you please put me down?”

I looked at her.

“Oops. Forgot about that, sorry.”

Then I put her down gently.

She straightened her jacket and asked, “How the he** did you forget that?!?”

I scratched the back of my head sheepishly and answered, “Well, you’re not exactly very heavy, you know, and I was otherwise distracted with all the yelling and hitting and panicking.”

Then I remembered Malcolm and looked around for him. I saw him staring at us out of his door, unsure about what to do.

Good, that means he didn’t call the cops. He was thinking of it, though, so I beckoned him over with my hand.

He looked at Jessica, who looked at me for a second before nodding at him.

When he got to us, I told him, “I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t call the cops. I can’t let myself get arrested right now, and I never even wanted any trouble to begin with, so…”

“Then what were you doing to Jessica?” he demanded.

“Defending myself. She punched at me. Same with you.”

He looked at Jessica again, who nodded in confirmation to him, before giving me a nod of wary acceptance and slowly going back to his apartment.

"Malcolm!" I called.

He turned to me, only to receive his frying pan back hanging right in front of him.

He grabbed it, and I let go.

"Thanks," he mumbled.

I nodded, and he went back to his apartment.

I turned back to Jessica and asked, “So, do you want me to give you our phone number and you call us if you turn up a lead, or do you want to come and live at the school until we find them?”

“I can live at the school?”

“Yeah. You could stay in one of the empty teacher dorm rooms. They’re pretty nice.”

Apparently, that struck her badly, the idea of being in a fancy place not her own home, and she shuddered.

“No thanks.”

I paused, unsure how to phrase my next question.

“I could help you with that, you know. The fears and triggers. I can help you feel like yourself again, if you want.”

She started and panicked a bit.

“What do you mean?” she asked warily.

“It’s a trick I learned from my healer friend, that last bit, actually. She does it naturally to herself as a side effect of one of her abilities. There’s a part of the mind called the ‘self’ that holds your true essence. If I trigger that to flood the rest of your mind, you’ll become sure of who you really are and any insecurities you may have will seem distant and less important. It reportedly feels really weird, though, especially if there are a few surprises about yourself that you find out, so it’s generally a bad idea to start with that. But I can help you with that, if you let me. I’ve seen the effects of trauma before, and though it usually doesn’t involve mind control, I have seen cases of that as well, so I’m a lot more likely to understand where you’re coming from and believe you, no matter what you tell me about what happened and how you feel about it now. We’ll settle on some rules on the uses of my telepathy and how I can help you with it, you can stop at any time, and if you say no, I won’t force you or threaten you or anything. That’s both wrong and completely against the whole point of this.”

“So basically, it’s mind-control therapy?” she snarked.

I snorted.

“It’s a lot more effective than any of those regular shrinks out there, that’s for sure. And you’d have full control over what I do to your mind, so long as you actually trust me to do exactly what you ask me to and no more. I’m kinda expecting a ‘no’ here, but I have to offer.”

She turned it over in her mind a bit, and I could tell she felt weird about it. I don’t blame her.

Then she looked at me warily and asked, “Can I think about this more without you around? It’s kinda weird knowing you’ll probably hear everything I think about…”

“Sure. Take your time. No rush. And no, that’s not a command; telepathy doesn’t work like that.”

She kept looking at me warily, but nodded.

I handed her a piece of paper.

“Anyways, here’s the phone number for the mansion – the school. Thanks for agreeing to help.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled, snatching the paper from my hand.

She stared at it for a bit, then looked at me critically, turning a few things over in her mind that I tried my best not to hear before deciding to ask me her question.

“You hear any of that?”

I winced.

“I tried my best not to. You projected a bit. Something about wanting to ask me something about myself?” I hedged.

She gave me a suspicious look, unsure if she believed me, but continued anyways.

“You said you don’t control people by telling them stuff. How DO you control people, then?”

I squirmed a bit before answering.

“I just kinda… reach in, find what I want to change, and do it. It’s kinda hard to explain…”

I rubbed the back of my neck awkwardly.

She considered this for a bit, then asked, “Would I know if you _did_ do something?”

Ooh, awkward question…

I bit my lip.

“Not if I didn’t want you to. You _do_ have some shielding that I’d need to bypass, and you’d probably feel that if I’m not careful, but it’d kinda be a moot point pretty soon after anyways, so… Still, gah, that’s really creepy! Ugh…”

I shuddered.

“What do you mean by ‘shielding’?”

I cocked my head at her and examined it a bit more closely.

“It seems to be a type of shielding that would make you pretty resistant to certain forms of mind control. Like Kilgrave’s power.”

She was shocked.

“You mean you think I’m immune to Kilgrave?!?” she exclaimed.

“I’m saying I’m pretty _sure_ you’re immune to Kilgrave.”

“How?!?”

“You know how I said all humans have telepathic potential?”

She nodded, still shocked.

“Well, trauma is the best training situation, so my best guess is that you tried to resist Kilgrave’s commands so many times and with enough effort that you sort of trained yourself to shield.”

She looked troubled.

“You said earlier that stuff I thought about Kilgrave controlling me flew out at you or something. You can’t block it out?”

I winced.

“Not particularly well. It’s either off or on at least a minimum power level. That means if I tone it down all the way, I’ll only feel emotions, the location of the minds in my range, and the general sort of _tone_ of someone’s thoughts and sometimes a basic subject of what a person is thinking about. It’s kinda hard to explain that bit. If I block my ability out completely, I become really jittery as a side effect and am liable to potentially kill someone if they startle me, so I tend to avoid doing that… It _does_ make crowds really annoying, though. Usually I have my healer friend with me so I can focus on her mind instead of others, and that helps me block them out more effectively, but…”

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“And she’s okay with that?”

“Oh yeah! She’s kinda obsessed with telepathy. She even ended up being the one I practiced on the most when I first got this ability. She INSISTED! Sometimes, if we’re the only two people in the room, she won’t even speak aloud to me! She thinks it’s the coolest thing ever. She’s also not much of a secrets person, so there was really only the one accidental incident that happened before we could really claim to have no secrets from each other.”

“Huh.”

She considered me a bit more, then asked, “So if I’m immune to Kilgrave, why not to you too?”

“Different power, different frequency, so to speak. It gives more or less the same effect, but in a different way.”

“Prove it,” came out of her mouth before she stopped, froze, and panicked at what she just said.

I froze too.

“Pretty sure you didn’t mean that…” I said cautiously.

Relief mixed with confusion in her at that, but she was still scared.

I took a step back.

“Maybe I should go now?” I hedged.

She then shook her head and tried to calm herself down.

“No. No, I still wanna ask you stuff. You’re really not like him, though; it’s obvious, but…”

“But I’m still a mind-controller, right?”

At her look, I replied, “Oh please, I didn’t need telepathy for THAT one!”

“Yeah, good point. Still…”

“Yeah. You wanted to ask me something else?”

“Yeah. If you find Erik and Kilgrave, what are you going to do with him… with Kilgrave?”

I thought about it a bit before answering, “Probably bring him back to the mansion. We have dungeons that can hold him, and he won’t stand a chance of escaping with all the telepaths there. He’d never be able to control a telepath of our strengths, and Paula – my healer friend – has her ‘self’ shield thing going for her, not to mention the fact that we’ll all be able to release anybody else from any compulsion he gives them. Miranda came back with a compulsion to not speak, and I freed her from that quite easily.”

After many warring emotions went through her, Jessica exclaimed, “You can free someone from his commands?!?”

“Yeah.”

“And he can’t control you?”

“Not a chance.”

“How can you be sure?”

I rolled my eyes.

“I’ve encountered siren types before. Both types too.”

At her questioning look, I clarified, “A siren type is a person who controls other via speech. The most common type is the pure sonic type, which involves a certain sonic frequency that makes most people very suggestible. It doesn’t work on everyone, and when it does, it’s not exactly perfect. I mean, for some stuff, it works pretty perfectly, but it’s basically a stronger form of hypnosis, so they can’t make people do things completely against their nature. Not really. The second type inputs a mental frequency into their voice that is remarkably similar to the telepathic type, though clearly not enough for the contagion to attack, since Kilgrave is obviously that type and not dead yet. You’ve seen and felt that effect firsthand. Though now that I think about it, the empath power is even CLOSER to telepathy, both genetically AND functionally, so I’m surprised other empaths haven’t died yet either. Huh. Anyways…”

“Empath power?”

“Miranda said he had a supressed empath power – the ability to sense emotions – that she healed and which Erik is probably manipulating as much as he possibly can, knowing him.”

Jessica snorted.

“Oh the irony. The man without empathy can now sense emotions. Ha!”

I raised an eyebrow.

“That bad, huh?”

“Oh you have NO idea…”

I paused.

“I _could_ have one… If you want…”

She froze, then thought about it.

“Will it help you find him?”

“No, probably not. Not while he’s with Erik anyways. It might help _you_ though if you agree to my offer of help.”

She looked down and considered it.

“Then only if I say yes. Not now.”

I nodded.

“Fair enough. Anything else you wanted to know?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Okay then. Call when you have a lead. See ya.”

“Yeah. See ya.”

I gave her a little wave and turned to walk away.

I was halfway down the hall when she spoke again.

“Erik said he’d kill him when he was done with him.”

I paused, then turned my head to the side to answer her and said, “Erik will NEVER be done with an empath.”

Jessica paused, thought about it, then turned around and went into her apartment.

When I heard the door close, I left.

We got a response from Jessica half an hour later.

A mysterious camera blackout happened around flights going to Great Britain, and a quick trip to the airport and some dug up supressed memories revealed that the pair had gotten on a plane to Glasgow.

Using the teleporter network we’d been cultivating all year, I was there within the hour.

Then the teleporter that had brought me the last couple of miles collapsed.

It turns out that he neglected to tell us that he had the flu.

I called the backup teleporter, but he didn’t answer, so I tried again.

When he finally picked up several calls later, I hissed at him, “Dude, you’re supposed to have this phone on you AT ALL TIMES! What happened?”

“Sorry, I was in the middle of a big meeting and nobody was letting me use the bathroom until like a minute ago, and trying to find a bathroom where I can teleport without people noticing is NOT easy right now! Speaking of, uh, you’re gonna have to track down one of my coworkers; I think she’s suspecting something.”

I sighed and rubbed my eyes with two fingers before responding, “All right, I’ll get to that after, but right now I need you to come rescue Puddle Jumper here, then come take me back to Arc when I’m done here. PJ neglected to tell me he had the flu and collapsed. I’m at the Glasgow airport, Gate C, right outside where passengers get off here. You know the drill, Spark.”

“All right. Gimme a minute. Flare, right?”

“Yup, as usual!”

A loud banging was heard over the phone.

“Sh**!” cried Spark. “Someone found me! I’ll have to do a GPS jump, and I’m bringing a passenger or two!”

I sighed.

“I’ll be ready.”

“K, see ya, bye!”

I activated the GPS tracker on my phone, put out a ‘don’t notice anything weird here’ field, and waited.

Thirty seconds later, a small pile of humans and one mutant materialized three feet away from me.

I made the humans freeze and raised my eyebrows.

“One or two?”

Spark looked at me sheepishly.

“They brought friends…”

“I can see that,” I laughed.

Then I pointed over to the collapsed Puddle Jumper and focussed on the humans.

A quick scan revealed that apparently Spark’s coworker was already spreading rumours, and they were spreading fast.

I modified their memories and knocked them out by the time Spark returned for me.

I turned to him.

“We have a problem. Take me back to your job.”

He nodded and obeyed.

It took three hours to clean up the rumour mess, including finding any paper files and electronic files and e-mails and the like that might start the problem all over again.

Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem, since the plane I was waiting for wasn’t due for four, but the plane was early, meaning either they had really good luck in the weather department or Erik got impatient.

So I missed him by a hair.

Again.

At least Puddle Jumper didn’t die, though he wished he did after the reaming out he got.

Erik was careful after that for some reason, so we figured he’d still be in Great Britain.

It still took us three weeks to finally catch a break.

I was just finishing a last-minute healing session with Paula when Emma sent to me from Cerebro.

_“Flare! Enormous empath power spike just inside a forest in London. RIGHT NOW!”_

I got the exact coordinates from her, put them into my phone’s location app, and started calling the teleporters.

Within the hour, I was in London, right outside the forest I was supposed to be in.

I sensed the empath spike.

HA! We finally found them!

I then stalked forward into the forest, intent on finally capturing my prey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this was longer than I expected… If you found this mostly boring, let me know how it could improve, please. If you at least like the Jessica bit, please do say so; I hope I did that well.
> 
> Next up: Christy finds Kilgrave in a rather uncomfortable position.


	4. Found Them!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy! Now we get to the real meat of the story!

As I got nearer to the power spike spot, I started to properly sense the emotions coming from there.

It was definitely Kilgrave, and he was incredibly distressed.

I started running.

Further probing revealed that he was bound and gagged and in an incredible amount of pain from… oh dear…

I burst into the clearing to see for myself, and sure enough, there was a hooker with her mouth around his bits doing what hookers do.

… Why do I always end up in these situations?!?

Oddly enough, I sensed the same kind of compulsion on the hooker as I did on Miranda, except the hooker, Keira, was compelled to desire Kilgrave and to do what she was doing to him.

Kilgrave clearly didn’t want it though, and I had an idea of what happened here.

There was no sign of Erik, though, but I might as well fix this situation up before looking for him.

Keeping my senses alert for his eventual return, I released Keira from her compulsion, put her to sleep, pulled her off of Kilgrave and his bits, opened the car door, and carefully lay her down on the back seat.

Kilgrave was still incoherent from the amount of input his newish empath ability had been giving him, so I took the time to scan him for information on what happened here.

Apparently, he’d been in this situation for about 50 minutes so far, and it was supposed to last an hour, so Erik would probably be back in about ten minutes. He had apparently just left after getting Kilgrave to fall into him.

I don’t even want to think about the rest of the stuff I found out.

I did however reflexively look at his bits and noticed the metal in it.

Well, I may not have ever seen one in person before, but I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to look like THAT.

Granted, he’s a male mind-controller, so it’s probably caused a significant amount of damage in the past, but still, ouch…

Also, something is wrong with his mind.

It’s somehow… childish. Like it had never developed properly.

A quick scan revealed that he had manifested his compulsion ability at the age of five due to some horrific experiments and can’t turn it off.

Ouch, now I feel bad for him. While I’ve never heard of someone manifesting such a power at such a young age before, giving any traumatized five year old a compulsion ability without the empathy was never going to end well.

Ugh, I have to have more information before I can decide what to do about this.

While his mind was settling, I looked up and scanned for Erik.

I found him a considerable distance away, and he wasn’t wearing his helmet.

He noticed my touch, however, since I wasn’t trying to be subtle, and recognized it.

He couldn’t believe what he was feeling and was wondering if Kilgrave had escaped or if he’d finally gone insane.

He examined his own thoughts for a few seconds, then decided to run back to the car to check on his captive.

He reached for his helmet, so I quickly reached into his mind and made him unable to use his power.

His helmet dropped out of midair before I caught it with my own power.

He started to panic mildly, then burst into the clearing where we were.

I just stood there with my arms crossed and a smirk on my face as I looked at him.

“Hello, Erik.”

His eyes were as wide as saucers in his disbelief, and he had no idea what to do.

He wasn’t even sure what to _think_!

I sighed and gave him the short version of events.

“Eagle got her wings back at the eleventh hour and saved my butt, and we’ve been gathering telepaths ever since. We found ten more and hid in the then-new sub-sub basement’s hermetically sealed room. It’s got a bunch of additions to it now, actually. We’re still not sure how you managed to get a lead before we did, but you’re really royally screwing things up for us with your murder spree! Granted, we really should have told you we were alive, but still! You’ve totally gone off the deep end, dude! Hopefully you didn’t kill anyone important yet…”

He still stood there in shock and disbelief, so I gave him a bit of a mental ‘thwack’ in his mind to both jar him out of his stupor and prove to him that I was real.

Kilgrave had come back to himself a few seconds earlier and was listening to this all intently.

 _“Oh, and Kilgrave’s lucid again, so I’d really appreciate it if you’d hurry up and say something soon,”_ I sent into his mind as extra proof.

That seemed to do it.

“Flare?” he breathed weakly.

“In the flesh!” I chirped.

“Charles?”

I shook my head.

“Paula was still wingless, and Elixir was dead.”

A mixture of relief that the Prof hadn’t not contacted him because he had totally rejected him and sadness that he really HAD died flooded through him at that.

Kilgrave rolled his eyes mentally – and I assume physically as well – behind me at that and mentally disparaged him for it.

I turned and snapped at him, “Oh, shut up, Kilgrave!”

 _“I didn’t say anything!”_ he thought.

“I’m a telepath, you idiot. I can _hear_ you!”

Before he had a chance to snark back at me, Erik pulsed with anger, making both of us flinch.

“What are you doing here anyways, Flare? And why have you blocked my powers?”

I sensed that Kilgrave was intrigued by that information, but I ignored him to answer Erik.

“I’ve been trying to find you for three weeks now, you slippery b*stard! You better not have killed anybody who knew anything about the makings of the contagion, or I swear, you’ll wish you were never born! We’re trying to find a cure, you twit!”

“Well, how was I supposed to know there was anybody left to cure?”

“That shouldn’t have mattered! What about anybody else who is to manifest as a telepath? You are willing to condemn all of those mutants to death for the sake of revenge? You didn’t even think of finding a cure! The Prof would have been so disappointed in you.”

“Well, Charles isn’t here anymore!”

“That’s no excuse!”

“Well, what about my powers?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to risk you escaping anytime soon, now was I?”

At that point, he stopped yelling at me and got confused.

“Why would I escape?”

I raised an eyebrow and smirked.

“Because I’m going to take your new toy away from you and take over the hunt myself, of course!”

Panic and anger went through him at that, and Kilgrave flinched and was trying to figure out if this was a good thing or not.

Erik just ended up sputtering a lot, unsure what to say due to knowing that I was fully capable of handling Kilgrave myself, and a LOT better than he ever could.

Not to mention that without his powers, he was completely at my mercy.

“Now, Erik,” I simpered. “If I give you back control over your powers, will you release Kilgrave and remove those obscene metal rings from his… equipment… on your own, or do I have to compel you? I’d rather not have to vaporize the stuff myself, and I don’t want to touch THAT, even with my powers!”

Erik clenched his teeth at that, a vein pulsing in his temple, knowing full well that he couldn’t lie to me and being EXTREMELY unwilling to let his new toy go so easily.

I smirked.

“Compulsion it is, then. Actually, I have a better idea. I have a pretty good idea of what you probably did to this guy, and even if he deserved it, something just feels wrong with the picture I’m getting from all of this. So.”

I turned to Kilgrave.

“Oh KIL-grave!” I sang, making him perk up nervously and Erik panic.

“No! You can’t trust him!” he cried.

I looked at him and responded, “I am well aware of that. Watch.”

Turning back to Kilgrave, I spoke.

“You. If I take off your gag, are you going to have any problem compelling Erik here to free you with his powers, and only free you, once I release them to him?”

He shook his head no, but I could see what he was planning, so I made a plan of my own.

Using only my telekinesis, I removed his gag and tossed it onto the ground.

Kilgrave worked his jaw around a bit to loosen up the sore muscles, thought about his phrasing, then spoke.

“Erik, when Flare here releases your powers to you, you will only use them to do what I say you will do with them. You will release me from these manacles and remove the metal from my p****. You will do these things in a way that will not cause me any pain.”

I felt the compulsion settle into Erik’s mind and felt Kilgrave’s anticipation at the results and at the idea of getting to the next stage of his plan.

I release my hold on Erik’s powers and told him, “They are released.”

The compulsion swept through his mind stronger than those of a lot of telepaths that I’ve seen, and Erik obeyed, completely unable to resist, despite his efforts.

The metal melted right off of Kilgrave and formed a ball in midair while Kilgrave got up and stretched.

He then turned towards us, opened his mouth, and commanded, “Now kill yourself with that metal, Erik. Flare, don’t stop him.”

Having prepared for this, I dispelled the compulsion on Erik practically as soon as it was given. 

Right before the second one hit my mental shields.

I grimaced and shuddered at the sensation.

“Ugh! _Man_ , THAT is _irritating_!” I complained, much to Kilgrave’s shock.

A shock that increased when he noticed that Erik wasn’t dead.

I disabled his powers again – making the metal ball that he had been levitating drop like a brick – and removed the compulsion to obey Kilgrave in regards to his power usage before looking at Kilgrave again.

I grinned.

“Now THAT is what I was dying to see! That look! THAT look!”

I turned to Erik and pointed at Kilgrave’s face.

“See? Oh, how I LOVE to mess up plans like that! It’d be a lot more entertaining if his control frequency wasn’t so dang _irritating_ to my shields, but still!”

Erik just stayed really pissed off at me, and Kilgrave was outright panicking at AGAIN finding himself not in control of anything.

I was smug about my success when I realized my next problem.

“Uh, guys? Just sit still for a minute while I figure out what I’m going to do next with you, k? And stop panicking, Kilgrave; I’m not going to hurt you, probably. Just don’t push your luck, and you’ll be fine.”

 _“She came here without a plan?”_ he thought, but didn’t dare say, not quite believing yet that I could actually be a telepath.

Annoyed, I snapped at him.

“Well, I _did_ have a basic plan, but now I see that it needs modifying! And yes, I’m a telepath; we have a healer that’s been keeping us alive, and we are rather good at staying hidden!”

I ignored his shock and Erik’s mental grumbling and focused on my own thoughts for a bit before I came to a decision.

“Ooh, I know!” I exclaimed. “Hold on.”

Then I pulled out my phone and called the safe-room.

After a couple of rings, Emma of all people picked up the phone.

“Hello?” she purred into the receiver.

I rolled my eyes and answered, “Hello Emma.”

Before I had a chance to continue, Erik exclaimed, “EMMA!!! Emma Frost survived?!?!?”

I sighed.

“And THIS is why we didn’t tell you. And yeah, diamond form. Now shut up and let me talk!”

I let him stew over that while I turned my attention back to my phone.

“I need to speak with Eagle. Hand her the phone, would you?”

“You are going to use her codename and not mine?”

“What, you actually want me to call you ‘The White Queen’?”

“Well, it is certainly better than ‘Diamond Edges.”

“I never said you had to take suggestions from Eagle. Speaking of which…”

“Very well, very well, wait just a moment.”

A short pause later, she spoke again.

“She is on her way. She was flirting with Mark again in the weight room.”

“Is she playing the silent game again?”

“She hasn’t spoken a word since you left. Not even when Beast came for a visit.”

“Hmm. She’s probably just restless. When was her last flight?”

“Yesterday. She refuses to leave until she’s sure you won’t need her. And here she is.”

I heard the sound of a phone changing hands, then Paula’s voice.

“Hey Flare.”

I smiled.

“Hey Eagle. What’s this I hear about you not taking your daily flight yet?”

I could almost hear her squirming on her end.

“I wanted to make sure I was always around if you needed me in case you finally found them and someone got hurt.”

I smiled wider with pride.

“Well, I finally DID find them, and surprise surprise, Erik’s already hurt Kilgrave a good bit. Now _I_ didn’t have to hurt anybody yet, though Erik’s pretty pissed about not being able to use his powers…”

Paula snorted.

“So are you coming back or what?”

“Actually, that’s the problem. I can’t trust Erik on his own anywhere now, especially with how obsessed he’s gotten over his new siren empath, and I don’t want to have to start erasing memories or messing with his thoughts right now. And Kilgrave is as immature as a child; apparently he got his powers at five, so you can imagine how THAT turned out…”

“Ouch…”

“Yeah, tell me about it. Normally, I’d come back with both of them and let the others handle them, but I don’t trust Emma with either of them while I’m not there, and I really want to spend some time with Kilgrave to try and get a handle on his issues. And the helmet is going to be a problem while it’s this close to Magneto.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“That’s why I called. I need you to come here and take the helmet to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Keep out of the water if you want and take the ground route for speed. Then come and heal Kilgrave, so don’t forget your blood tubes and a couple of nutrient drinks. I’m taking them with me on the hunt.”

At the part where I mentioned his healing, Kilgrave perked up and listened with interest.

Paula responded, “Are you sure about this?”

“I don’t like it, but I like the other option even less, so yes, I’m sure.”

“Ok. It’ll take me an hour to get to the Trench, then London, though, even using the sub-Atlantic ridge I found last time. You gonna stay out there in the forest or wherever for that long?”

I thought about it.

“Good point. Hold on a sec.”

I turned to Erik.

“Where are you staying?” I asked.

He stayed quiet, still stewing, so I plucked the information from his mind.

“Eagle? Meet me in the Marriott Hotel on Edgewear Road, Room 303, when you get here. I’ll be there in less than an hour, so we should be good.”

“Okay. See you in a bit!”

“See ya! Bye!”

I hung up, then called another number and motioned the two men to stay silent.

It answered on the third ring.

“Yeah?”

“Hey Jessica,” I answered, much to the shock of both men.

“Christy?”

“Call me Flare when I’m in the field, kay?”

“Really?” she snarked. “That’s your codename?”

“Hey, my first power was the ability to make fireballs, and there aren’t any real good telepath codenames!”

“Well, whatever floats your boat, then…”

“ANYWAYS…” I stressed. “I’m calling to let you know that I’ve found them, so you can stop looking now.”

There was a long pause before she finally responded, voice shaking.

“… Is he there?”

“Yes.”

Another pause.

“What are you going to do with him now?”

“I can’t trust either of them to be out of my sight for long, even with the other telepaths, so I’m taking them with me on the hunt until I can.”

She didn’t answer.

“Did you decide yet about my offer?” I asked carefully.

Another pause.

“I need more time. Maybe when you’re done with your hunt. Then I’ll tell you.”

“Fair enough. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help me with that?”

She paused again.

“Send me names, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, you know,” I stressed.

She sighed.

“I know. But I’ll do it anyways.”

“Thank you, Jessica. You can call Beast about payment. He’ll give you great compensation.”

“… Thanks. I will. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Then she hung up.

I turned to the two men.

For once, they had identical thoughts.

I sighed.

“Yes, I know Jessica Jones. I found out about her from Miranda and got her to help me find you. No, I didn’t use my powers to coerce her to help; she did that all of her own free will. She has decided to help with the hunt from her place. Anything else? No? Then get in the car, both of you. Erik, you’re driving. Take us to the hotel you’re staying at, and don’t even THINK of going anywhere else or trying anything funny; I’ll be watching you. Kilgrave, if you try to escape, I’ll put you to sleep just like I did with that hooker. We’re bringing her to the hotel for now until I have time to take care of her.”

Neither of them dared piss me off any further and got into the car without too much fuss.

Once everyone, including Keira, had been secured in their seats, and I had secured the helmet as well, I motioned Erik to start driving, and with a grumble, he did.

A couple of minutes into the ride, I turned to Kilgrave and sighed.

“I can feel you dying to ask me something, so just spit it out already!”

“You don’t already know what it is?”

“I’m paying more attention to your intentions than your thoughts. And yes, there’s a difference. I can tell whether or not you intend to do something like speak or ask a question or run, but I’m not actively trying to get any specifics, and you’re not thinking loud enough to activate my passive abilities.”

 _“Like this?”_ he thought loudly.

I smirked.

“Yeah, like that. If you try to distract me with loud thoughts, though, like I see you thinking about back there, I’m not going to be very happy with you, fair warning. Don’t do that.”

A spike of fear and worry went through his mind then before he decided to ask his original question.

“When you were talking to Jessica, you mentioned an offer. What was it?”

“Therapy. I offered her a sort of psychic therapy. It’s sort of like regular therapy, except I can read her mind and help her understand her own feelings better and even nudge her in the right direction if she tells me to. Of course, because of how the mind works, the less mind control I use, the better. The effect won’t last otherwise.”

“Why?” he asked, genuinely confused.

“Because contrary to popular belief, mind control only affects the conscious mind and some of the subconscious mind, not the true self of the person. Basically, you don’t control a person; you control the greater portion of their minds. When the control goes away, so does the effect, and their true self comes back, more or less. The actions they took while under control will still affect them, though, and if there’s enough trauma from them, the ‘self’ can ironically be self-suppressed, in a way. It’s what causes a lot of the cases of depression out there, along with some other disorders, though obviously only a few of them are actually from mind control aftermaths. Jessica suffers heavily from this self-suppression because of you, so I offered to help with that.”

“What did I ever do to her that was so bad?!?” he cried, genuinely confused.

Hoo boy, this might take a while…

“Well, the mind control can’t have helped. Most people hate being controlled, and Jessica is no exception. She seems to be perpetually terrified of being made to do something horrible to herself or others, so I’m guessing you’re the one responsible for that fear. Also, while I’ve never properly confirmed this, the feel of her mind is the same feeling I get from rape victims, so I’m guessing you made her have sex with you. Maybe even made her like it, which is worse. Messing with a person’s like and dislikes and emotions ALWAYS screws them up when the effect fades, unless they asked for it of their own free will, and even then it sometimes does a bit.”

“But we always stayed in five-star hotels, had the best food, and went so many places together!” he cried.

I sighed.

“That probably just confused her even more. You just basically gilded the cage you put her in. She was still trapped by your compulsions and couldn’t leave. It might have been a small comfort to her, depending on what else you made her do, but it doesn’t change the fact that she was trapped with you and having more or less her every thought and action controlled by you. NOBODY likes that! If Erik had done the whole five-star hotel thing and good food thing with you, how much difference would THAT have made to how much you hate and fear him right now?”

He opened his mouth, thought about it, then closed his mouth and furrowed his brow in confused contemplation.

Watching his thoughts, I noticed that the types of connections he was making now were essentially completely new to him, and I probed as to why.

Just as I discovered the reason for this practical miracle, Erik spoke up mentally.

_“Why are you spelling it out for him like that? He should be figuring out these things on his own.”_

I mentally rolled my eyes and replied, _“Some things NEED to be spelled out, Erik. Especially for him. And he was already figuring this stuff out on his own; I was just forcing him to actually think about it more and not try to suppress it. Without using my powers, oddly enough; he’s surprisingly receptive to this. Though I’ve discovered the most likely reason for this now.”_

_“What is it?”_

_“He seems to have suffered considerable brain damage in the past. Miranda’s healing has fixed that AND allowed the correct connections to form under the right circumstances. Clearly, the empathic power wasn’t the only thing she healed in her attempt. With a bit of prodding, the lingering effects of the brain damage can potentially disappear completely! His actual human empathy will take a bit more work. He seems to be suppressing that so that he doesn’t have to come to terms with what he’s done. Classic denial. He also needs to be told what the point of empathy is, ‘cause he clearly doesn’t get it. And now he’s pouting and doesn’t want to talk. Nice. He really IS just a child in there, my goodness…”_

_“You hadn’t figured that out already?"_ He sounded amused.

_“Of course I had, you idiot! Practically from the second I first touched his mind! And don’t think you’re distracting me from your plan; if you swerve this car, YOU’LL be the one with brain damage! Also, that wouldn’t really distract me much, and your powers wouldn’t come back even if you did. Not for a good while, anyways. And it would piss me off a LOT. Not to mention that you’d probably startle Kilgrave into commanding you to stop, and that might not end well either.”_

He just grumbled in his mind, frustrated that I had caught him out.

I just smirked and sat back while he continued to drive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Normally, Christy isn’t quite so sadistic, but she’s NOT happy at the time – at EITHER of them – so some of her usual rules went out the window here.
> 
> Also, yeah, I’m playing a bit fast and loose with psychology here, but whatever. It’s a story. I can make stuff up to work with telepathy if I want.
> 
> Paula isn’t using the teleporter network because she really needs to fly, and the teleporters could use a rest.
> 
> Next up: The hotel! And just the setting up of rules and schedules, more or less.
> 
> The hunt should start out properly the chapter after that.


End file.
